Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cooling fan for an electronic device, and more specifically to a method and apparatus for installing and removing a cooling fan in a chassis supporting an electronic device.
Background of the Related Art
Server density continues to be a key factor in market requirements. Likewise, concurrent maintenance remains a key market requirement, especially for high end server systems. Because most server systems are designed for an industry standard rack, of which a 19″ width is the most prevalent, the width of a server cannot exceed 450 mm. Additionally, there is pressure to minimize the height of the server so that the number of servers that can be installed in a rack is maximized. Therefore, the frontal space of a server system is tightly constrained. When concurrent maintenance is considered, one would want as many devices as possible to be serviced through the front of the server without hindering the operation of devices not being serviced.
Commonly, the type of devices that would be required to be serviced through the front of the system are hard disk drives, HDDs (which now includes non-rotating media such as flash drives) and cooling fans. This means HDDs and cooling fans compete for the same limited front space of the server. In order to access both HDDs and cooling fans from the front of the system, the system design would require one of two solutions. The first solution would be to grow the frontal space in height so that the HDDs and fans can all be accessed from the front without having to disconnect or remove one or the other to get access to the device to be removed. This solution is in conflict with market requirements for high density. The second solution would be to use depth of the system to have the fans behind the HDDs and have the HDDs removable through the front while still being operational. While this second solution solves the frontal space issue, it creates a complex design of needing a sliding mechanism for the HDDs to slide out of the way of the fans without causing disruption to the read/write of the drives while they are extended out the front of the system. Also, an elaborate cable management system would be needed to provide for the SAS/PCIe/power cables to the drive backplanes in order to extend and retract while a fan is being accessed. Neither of these two solutions is desirable.